Fugitive in Bronx Slasher Case Leaves a Trail of Fear and Taunts

The day after a man accused in a slashing episode jumped bail during his trial, the Bronx prosecutor handling the case was browsing the man’s Instagram page when he came upon the stately, bearded face of Don Juancho Nieto Meléndez, a 19th-century Venezuelan spirits connoisseur.

The face adorned green and black logos on two bottles of Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva rum, among the finest in the world. Below the photo was a message for the prosecutor, Karl Miller: “Salute Mr. Miller this is a good rum,” the note read, followed by an emoji of clinking beer mugs.

The fugitive, Ronald Plaza, 25, had been sitting in a Bronx courtroom only days earlier, on Dec. 3, listening to closing arguments in the case, in which he was accused of brutally beating and knifing a man outside a Bronx nightclub. But Mr. Plaza never showed up when jury deliberations began the next day.

By the time the jury delivered a guilty verdict on assault charges on Dec. 7, Mr. Plaza was hidden away somewhere, apparently enjoying the celebrated chestnut flavor and sugary aroma of the $40 bottles of Venezuelan rum.

“‘Bizarre’ is an understatement,” his lawyer, Alain Massena, said of the case.

On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Mr. Plaza in absentia to 10 years in prison, a development that offered no resolution to the people caught in his wake.

Mr. Plaza’s mother had offered her house in St. Petersburg, Fla., as collateral for a $250,000 bond in a separate case in Westchester County, in which he was charged with robbery and attempted murder. He has now missed court appearances in that case, too, putting the house at risk of being turned over to creditors and its current occupants, a renter and her teenage daughter, at risk of being kicked out.

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Ronald Plaza fled his trial.CreditOffice of the Bronx district attorney

The slashing victim and his wife also say Mr. Plaza’s friends or relatives have been trying to intimidate them into recanting their testimony, threatening them over the phone and even visiting the homes and businesses of their relatives in the Dominican Republic.

“It’s like I’m living in a movie,” said Jacqueline Narvaez, 34, whose husband, Anllel Segura, was scarred across his forehead and eyebrows in the attack. “And it’s a horror.”

Investigators from the office of the Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, have been interviewing witnesses as they search for Mr. Plaza. A spokeswoman for the office, Terry Raskyn, said the threats against Mr. Segura’s family had not been substantiated. But, she said, “We’re aware of it, and that’s another reason we want to apprehend him.”

Much of the speculation about Mr. Plaza’s whereabouts has centered on the Dominican Republic, where he was born to a Dominican mother and an American father who made trips there as an instructor for the Oakland Athletics.

Mr. Plaza, who eventually moved to the New York area, was known to have upscale tastes. On the night of the assault in the Bronx, in June 2014, Ms. Narvaez said, he was wearing a ring and carrying an expensive bag. She was waiting with her husband for their car as her husband tried to break up an argument among women nearby when, she said, Mr. Plaza “came out of nowhere and just punched him in the face.”

Court papers say two people held Mr. Segura down as Mr. Plaza slashed him several times across the head and temple, leaving Mr. Segura with wounds that required staples and nearly two dozen stitches. He now wears his hair longer to disguise the scars.

Soon after Mr. Plaza disappeared, Ms. Narvaez said, she got a call from two men who said they were in the Dominican Republic telling her to go to Mr. Plaza’s lawyer’s office to sign papers saying that she and her husband lied in their court testimony.

The men, she recalled, said that a retraction would be mutually beneficial and that neither she nor they wanted any “problems.”

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An Instagram post the fugitive directed at his prosecutor.CreditOffice of the Bronx district attorney

She said the callers also acknowledged knowing about visits to Mr. Segura’s mother’s home in the Dominican Republic, where, she said, men had come looking for Mr. Segura’s brother.

Ms. Narvaez said the Dominican authorities were dismissive of their reports. She worried that corruption in the country’s law enforcement agencies would let Mr. Plaza and his friends wreak havoc there for years.

Even in New York City, she said, “I feel like I have to watch my kids when they go out.”

“I don’t let them walk the dog any more at night,” she continued. “I look out the window two, three times before I take them to school if I see a vehicle standing there.”

Mr. Massena, the lawyer, said that he knew nothing about the threats and that he was surprised a defendant who had been engaged in court jumped bail after sitting through most of the trial.

About a week after Mr. Plaza stopped showing up to the Bronx courtroom, he was due in a Westchester court on the attempted murder charge.

In that case, in August 2014, he was accused of forcing a man out of a 2011 Porsche Cayenne at gunpoint in New Rochelle. As the man ran away, Mr. Plaza or someone with him fired at the man several times with a pistol before stealing the car, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.

Mr. Plaza set his Instagram page to private soon after the prosecutor noticed the taunt, leaving only a profile photo of a biohazard sign and his user name, RonyMontana31 — possibly a nod to the villain Tony Montana in the film “Scarface.”

But his Twitter account suggests Mr. Plaza has been enjoying a popular Netflix series along with his rum, perhaps taking pity on a real-life convict caught behind bars. On Jan. 11 at 1:40 a.m., his account posted a Twitter message for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, asking him to “do the right thing” and free the prisoner featured in the series “Making a Murderer.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Defendant in Bronx Slasher Case Disappears, Leaving Trail of Fear and Taunts. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe